Never Surrender

Mark Peel

Description

Never Surrender: The Life of Douglas Jardine is the enthralling story of England's most controversial cricket captain, forever associated with bodyline bowling on MCC's tour to Australia in 1932/33. Despite his privileged upbringing and amateur status, Jardine's steely personality and win-at-all-costs ethos was more akin to the professional game. Confronted with the run-making genius of Australia's Don Bradman in 1932/33, Jardine resorted to a form of intimidatory bowling that helped England regain the Ashes, but his tactics shocked Australia and brought relations between the two countries to the point of collapse. To restore harmony, Jardine was disowned by the MCC cricket establishment and shunned thereafter, but now - in a more modern, competitive age - his reputation has undergone a rehabilitation, not least in Australia. Drawing on fresh material, award-winning cricket author Mark Peel reappraises an outstanding leader whose care for those he valued knew no bounds.

Sujets

• Críquet
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 août 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785319990
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2021
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Mark Peel, 2021
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785319921
eBook ISBN 9781785319990
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Born to Rule
2. An Oxford Idol
3. The Best Amateur Batsman in England
4. The Multi-Coloured Cap
5. The Greatest Prize in Sport
6. Taming Bradman
7. Well Bowled, Harold!
8. The Conquering Hero
9. Indian Summer
10. The Retreat from Bodyline
11. Outcast
12. Redemption?
Afterword: Douglas Jardine
Bibliography
Photos
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I D LIKE to thank the following who provided me with information and advice during my research of Douglas Jardine: Richard Jefferson, Magnus Linklater, Gavin Lloyd, Nigel Hancock, the late Charles Randall, David Frith, Ivo Tennant and Tom Tennant.
I m extremely grateful to Neil Robinson, the Curator of Collections at Lord s and MCC, for all his help and for permission to quote from the MCC Archives; and to Robert Curphey, the Archive and Library Manager at Lord s, for his many efforts on my behalf.
I m also indebted to Julie Crocker, the Senior Archivist, The Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, and I acknowledge the permission of HM Elizabeth II for the use of the material; Suzanne Foster, the Archivist, Winchester College, and for permission to quote from its archive; Felix Beardmore-Gray, the Archivist, Horris Hill School; Bill Gordon, the Librarian, Surrey CC, Craig Marshall, the Archivist, Fettes College; Dr Christopher Skelton-Foord, the Librarian, New College, Oxford, Jennifer Thorp, Archivist, New College, Oxford and the staff at the National Library of Scotland.
Last but by no means least, I d like to express my gratitude to my agent Andrew Lownie; to Richard Whitehead for his highly professional copy-edit; and to Jane Camillin and Alex Daley at Pitch, along with Duncan Olner, Dean Rockett and Graham Hales for all their efforts on the design, proofing and typeset.
INTRODUCTION
FEW CRICKETERS have been stigmatised as much as Douglas Jardine, the imperious captain of England, who subjected Australia to Bodyline, a form of intimidatory bowling directed at the batsman s head and upper body, on MCC s tour in 1932/33. The Australian opener, Jack Fingleton, who played in the series, wrote in his book Cricket Crisis that Jardine was the most hated sportsman ever to come to Australia; the broadcaster, Alan McGilvray, called Jardine the most notorious Englishman since Jack the Ripper; and, more recently, the Australian cricket writer, Gideon Haigh, rated him the most reviled character in sport. It wasn t just Australians who held this view. Pelham (Plum) Warner, manager of the 1932/33 tour, complained in a letter home that one simply cannot like him , 1 and Gubby Allen, the one England fast bowler who refused to bowl Bodyline, informed his father that Jardine is loathed and, between you and me, rightly more than any German who fought in any war. 2
Allen was being unduly personal, but throughout his career Jardine proved a highly divisive figure. Born into a Scottish colonial family in Bombay in 1900, he experienced a solitary upbringing which shaped his austere character. A product of wartime Winchester College, where spartan values were much in vogue, he emerged as a brilliant sportsman, an intense competitor and a leader of iron resolve. A classical batsman of courage and style, he forged a reputation at Oxford and Surrey as one of the leading amateurs in the country, and following a successful Test debut against West Indies in 1928, he was picked to tour Australia that winter. He began with three successive centuries against state sides, and made a valuable contribution to England s retention of the Ashes, but his exposure to Australia and Australians left him distinctly underwhelmed.
Reserved and unbending, he failed to respond to their breezy informality and voluble humour. More pertinently, his icy contempt for the crowds who jeered him for slow scoring added to their impression of him as a snooty colonial lacking the common touch. As he strode out to bat, a tall, angular, acidulated and seemingly aloof Englishman, with a gaudy cap rampant and a silk handkerchief knotted around his throat, wrote Fingleton, he walked into the vision of many Australians as the very personification of the old school tie. 3
Enigmatic personality aside, Jardine s magisterial batting and powers of leadership won him the England captaincy in 1931 and he immediately set about stamping his authority. The Australian leg-spinner turned journalist Bill O Reilly regarded him as a modern-day Hannibal, who could have escorted a troop of elephants across the Alps without great difficulties. He led his team like an army, demanding absolute obedience, and with rigid on-field discipline. 4 In his first Test as captain - against New Zealand at Lord s - he confused the names of two debutants, Fred Bakewell and John Arnold, but no one dared contradict him. In the same match, he addressed the 44-year-old Frank Woolley, one of the titans of the English game, as if he were a novice, berated leg-spinner Ian Peebles for getting out to a loose shot as nightwatchman and admonished Peebles s fellow leg-spinner Walter Robins for his juvenile humour. When official business removed him temporarily from the field in the Gentlemen v Players fixture at Lord s in 1932, the atmosphere visibly relaxed as the slip cordon began exchanging pleasantries, only for it to vanish the moment he returned.
With his antipathy towards Australians and his determination to cut their idol, Don Bradman, down to size, Jardine s appointment as MCC captain for the 1932/33 tour - his tactical expertise notwithstanding - was a huge diplomatic gamble. When his former cricket master at Winchester, Rockley Wilson, who had toured Australia in 1920/21, heard of his appointment, he predicted that We shall win the Ashes but we may very well lose a Dominion , a prophecy that came to haunt Warner. D.R.J. is a very difficult fellow, he wrote to his wife early in the tour hates Australians and his special hate is now Bradman! 5 Shocked by Jardine s crude language, especially towards Bradman, Warner took great exception to his captain s ill-judged remark when they were inspecting the newly opened Sydney Harbour Bridge. As aircraft of the Royal Australian Air Force flew over, Jardine turned to him and said, I wish they were Japs. I wish they would bomb the bridge into their harbour. (The Japanese had recently provoked international outrage by their indiscriminate bombing of Manchuria.)
At a time of severe economic depression and political turmoil, Australia viewed the visit of MCC as a welcome distraction from personal hardship and an opportunity to advance its national identity away from the shadow of the mother country. The tourists were given a warm welcome when they arrived, but the good cheer soon faded when they unveiled tactics that flouted the spirit of the game. The main exponents of the Bodyline plan were the Nottinghamshire bowlers Harold Larwood and Bill Voce, both quick by any standards, but its author was Jardine. Jardine preached a policy of competitive hate , wrote Duncan Hamilton, Larwood s biographer. You had to hate the Australians on the field to beat them For his part, Larwood would never waver from his belief that he was of use to his captain, but never used by him. You know, he said, I think Mr Jardine would have made a famous soldier. 6
In that spirit Jardine forbade his players from exchanging pleasantries with the opposition on the field, and discouraged any fraternising with them off it. He also clamped down on all those who succumbed too easily to local hospitality. Shortly before the second Test at Melbourne, Larwood and Tommy Mitchell, the Derbyshire leg-spinner, spent an afternoon up town and, after meeting a group of actors from a pantomime, returned to the hotel very inebriated. Consequently, Jardine had Larwood tailed the following evening and when he ended up at the same theatre he was called to the phone by his captain, who ordered him home. Larwood told Mitchell that he would be back at half past ten, or eleven o clock, but come the promised hour there was no sign of Larwood. Jardine s word was law.
A top-class batsman who sold his wicket dearly, Jardine was the man for a crisis, not least against raw pace, which he played with resilience, even when the blows rained down on his body. It was the same in the field. A specialist gully, the mystery of why he missed two difficult catches in that position in the Adelaide Test of January 1933 was only revealed when he was seen bathing a badly bruised hand in his bedroom afterwards. He hated sympathy and expected his team to display similar resolve. In the vital fourth Test of the series, he hauled Eddie Paynter out of hospital where he was suffering from tonsillitis to stave off an England batting collapse and Paynter responded with a fighting 83, which went a long way to securing his side victory.
With England winning the first Test at Sydney and Australia triumphing in the secon